


The Invitation

by ellydash



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Angst, Confessions, F/F, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 21:15:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14269683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellydash/pseuds/ellydash
Summary: Frankie’s home now, but there’s a stranger where her best friend used to be.





	The Invitation

**Author's Note:**

> Set between 4x03 and 4x04.
> 
> Many thanks to Telanu, whose thoughtful and clarifying suggestions on an earlier draft helped me figure out what story I was telling.

Frankie comes back.

Mostly. Things have changed, though, in a way no one else wants to acknowledge, which means she isn’t all the way back. Not really. Something’s shifted the furniture of her La Jolla life while she’s been living in Santa Fe, and now that Frankie’s home again, she’s constantly bumping into sore spots, forgotten habits, trying to walk through the days in her old rhythm and failing badly.

Nothing’s the same anymore. Or _Grace_ isn’t the same, and maybe that’s just another way of saying everything’s different.

Grace is laughing easily, wide-mouthed, nothing needy and silent behind her teeth anymore, and Grace brought home another woman without telling Frankie about it, and Grace has a slick playboy boyfriend with a head of great hair who makes her feel young again. That’s what Grace wants out of her life now. Great hair and bullshit and the last three decades of her life erased.  

“When I’m in bed with him, I forget everything _,_ ” she tells Frankie one night soon after Sheree’s left, “it’s like I’m forty again _,_ except this time I’m having good sex,” and Frankie smiles at her so damn big it hurts a little. Offers, “It’s great you’re finally getting laid like you deserve _,_ ” because what’s she gonna do, tell Grace that she didn’t come back for the swinging door of an escape hatch?

Grace doesn’t respond, just nestles into the couch pillows propped up behind her back. Her right leg is elevated on the coffee table, knee wrapped in a towel-covered ice pack. One hand touches her neck, absentmindedly, fingers trailing, and it’d be obvious to anyone what she’s thinking about. The last time someone else lingered there.

“I’m really glad you’re happy,” Frankie informs Grace, because maybe she’ll be corrected this time, and Grace answers with her stranger’s laugh, says, “Yeah, well. It feels nice to forget.”

Short afternoon walks on the beach for as long as Grace’s knee allows it, far enough from the water that the tide won’t get them. They go south towards the jutting cliff face and towards nothing else in particular except more silence in the wrong January heat. Grace's new cane is useless on the shifting sand, but she won’t slink her arm through Frankie’s for support, doesn’t get close or spark something Frankie extinguished for good and can’t have the right to rekindle.

 _My best friend_. She walks untouched next to Grace and tries to feed herself on the words, eyes defenseless to wind off the water, salt.

These days, everything’s growing. Sol and Bud are growing beards, Allison’s growing a baby, Jacob’s growing quieter, Grace is growing things Frankie can’t share, a new relationship, new pain, and when Frankie stops by the nursery near Sol’s place to get another plant, to get something of her own to grow, Esteban’s gone. There’s a new guy behind the counter, some clean-cut square with no tats or piercings.

He gives her a smile that fades before Frankie’s able to take it. “Can I help you?”

It’s a question that implies there’s always help to be provided, if you’ll just quickly pinpoint for the other person what you need. Just get asked, that’s all, and you can freely approach your own frightened self to locate the answer. No problem.

“You can sure as hell try,” she says, cheerfully. “I need something I won’t kill.”

On the way home, there’s a cardboard box filled with hardy succulents on the passenger seat of her car. They’re sharp and beautiful, things she can’t directly touch.

“Did you really need to buy all of those?” Grace wants to know, after Frankie deposits the large box carefully onto the kitchen island. She’s leaning against the countertop to take the pressure off her knee, both eyebrows raised. There’s a mug cupped in her hands. Mint tea and bourbon, by the smell of it, even though it’s only a little before noon. “Wouldn’t two or eleven be sufficient?”

“They’re all orphans, Grace,” Frankie informs her. “Very tiny and very painful orphans in desperate need of some TLC, and I’m just the nurturing mama to give it to them.” She glances down into the box, looking for her favorite, an aloe plant that’s already blooming. “Don’t go chasing waterfalls, babies. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to.”

“Better watch out,” Grace warns, as Frankie grabs for the aloe. “I think you’re moving too fast.”

“Excuse you, I’m moving exactly as fast as I—” She stops, hand still in the box, and looks up at Grace. Holy cats. Was that—?

Yeah. Yeah, it was. There’s a self-satisfied grin spreading across Grace’s mouth, crinkling the corners of her eyes. She’s so damn pleased with herself for paraphrasing a decades-old song lyric, thoroughly and deeply proud, and Frankie’s heart cramps hard in response, constricting painfully in her chest like there’s a small fist around it.

She yanks out the aloe plant and says, brightly, to cover up the discomfort, “Well, Christ on a Triscuit. Are my adorable ears lying to me, or did I just hear Grace Hanson pick up on my indirect allusion to the third-greatest R&B song of the mid-1990s?”

“Your ears would have to work in the first place in order to lie,” Grace retorts, and were her cheeks that pink when Frankie walked in? Is she blushing? “Adorable or otherwise. But yes, that’s exactly what I just did.”

“And since when, pray tell, do you know TLC? I thought you liked your music like you like your men. Pompous and grandiose.” Frankie can’t help herself. It’s been a couple of days since she's performed a negative energy release exercise, damn her procrastination. “Of course, Mr. Richie Rich isn’t exactly what you’d call _baroque._ Get it, Grace?”

The grin on Grace’s face fades, not slowly but all at once. It’s replaced by the mug, Grace taking a long sip of the concoction she’s brewed up to get through today’s pain.

Frankie puts down the aloe plant and waits, her heart going a little too fast, for whatever’s coming.

Finally, Grace swallows and says, “You left a couple of CDs behind in the studio. I—when you were gone, before Sheree came to live with me—sometimes I’d play them when the house got too quiet. So it felt like I wasn’t alone anymore.” She laughs. This time, there’s no mirth in it. “Ridiculous, I know.”

“I painted three whole pieces to _The Best of Schubert_ ,” Frankie blurts out. “Back in Santa Fe.”

The confession startles Grace. Her hands jolt, and hot tea spills over the lip of the mug, splashing onto her skin. She exclaims in obvious pain.

“Grace? You all right?” Frankie’s immediately alert, ready to spring into action, but what’s to do? There’s a kitchen towel folded on the counter, something she was probably supposed to hang up and hasn’t. She grabs it, intending to give it to Grace, but Grace is already setting down her mug on the island, raising her fingers to her mouth to blow on them.

There’s no room in all that for Frankie, no moment of hesitation where Frankie can find a way in. So instead, she blots at the countertop, wiping up the drops of spilled tea.

“Grace?” she repeats, after there’s nothing else to clean.

“I’m fine, I—” Grace is wincing. She blows again on her fingers, a long controlled exhalation of air, and the skin around her eyes looks tight with the strain of effort. Finally, she says, “I’ll be all right. You listened to Schubert? My—he’s my favorite composer, you know.”

Sure, yeah, she’d listened to him. Over and over again, for weeks, until even silence had violins.

“He’s loud,” Frankie says, and it’s inane as shit, but a whole lot better than saying something like _duh, I know he’s your favorite, Grace. That’s why I bought the fucking CD for eight dollars and eighty-seven cents plus shipping, so I could put it on and pretend you were in the other room._ Not that she’d been able to stay convinced for more than ten seconds. All she’d done was stir up a mess of sharp loneliness that Frankie couldn’t let herself call longing, and made Grace’s absence feel bigger than it really had a right to be.

There’s no way she’ll ever let Grace see those paintings. Or anyone else, for that matter. They weren’t made for public consumption. After each one dried completely, she’d wrapped the canvas in an opaque drop cloth and stored it carefully in the back of her supply closet where she’d kept the things she needed. Just a compulsion demanding release, that’s all, a series of relentless intrusive thoughts that Frankie had been forced to expel into art so she could turn to Jacob at night with a real smile and sure hands.

“I thought you didn’t like classical music.”

“I don’t especially,” Frankie says, and then, before Grace has time to respond, “Hey, you sure you’re okay?”

They’re close enough to each other that the discoloration is obvious from here, Grace’s fingers reddening and raw with the results of what’s happened, Frankie’s carelessness. Her good hand is cradling the injured one, propping it up between her breasts. Another wound.

She expects Grace to restate what she’s already said, reassure Frankie that everything’s good, but instead, Grace tells her, “Honestly? It hurts.”

What’s weird is that the admission makes her dizzy, just a little, like for a second Frankie doesn’t know which direction is up or where the floor is or what’s happened to the Grace she knows, the Grace who doesn’t ever admit to being tender. Except she’ll do that, now. Sometimes she’ll say things like _I’m happy you’re coming home to me_ and _it makes me feel good to see you smile_ and since when, exactly, did Grace Hanson learn how to do that? Have a feeling, let herself talk about it?

If Frankie makes a joke, she’ll have a foothold again, a way to regain her equilibrium.

“Poor baby,” she says. It’s a little rough in her throat, lower and quieter than she’d meant it to sound. “Want me to kiss it all better?”

This is what they do. It’s what Frankie does, anyway. She'd done it just a couple of nights ago, in fact, when they were nestled together on the couch talking about ways to fall asleep. The volley is familiar routine by now; Frankie raises the possibility directly and lets Grace run away from it fast enough to carry both of them. It's safe, or safer. Everybody knows that looking right at the sun makes it difficult to see.

Except that Grace is staring back at her, really staring, like she’s heard something in Frankie’s voice that Frankie hadn’t meant to keep there, and somehow this isn’t funny at all. It’s the opposite of funny, in fact, because _funny_ is supposed to put a little distance between herself and what’s unsettling, enough for Frankie to feel comfortable again.

Slowly, Grace extends her hand away from her chest, holding it out in Frankie’s direction.

“Yes,” she says. “Kiss it.”

Time, Frankie knows, is a fiction created by the bourgeoisie to control the means of production, which is why it's capable of stopping. The world contracts to a telescopic view, narrowing in on what Grace is giving her, and is her hand trembling a little, or is Frankie the one who’s starting to shake?

She could say _I was joking_.

She could say _This isn’t how we do things, Grace._

She could say  _How can I fix us?_

None of that happens. Instead, someone else who’s using Frankie’s body takes a generous step forward, so that she’s standing right in front of Grace, and reaches for her hand. It’s offered palm down, fingers folded in a slight curve, like Grace is a lady waiting for her gentleman suitor to greet her properly.

Frankie won’t think about that. It’s hard to think too much about anything right now, actually, except for the way Grace’s hand feels in her own, soft and smooth. Moisturized at least twice daily with the best Say Grace has to offer, some thick expensive lotion without any added fragrance so that it won't contradict the perfume Grace rubs into the insides of her wrists. None of this is new information to Frankie. Still, though, it’s overwhelming, which might be why, when she brings Grace’s hand towards her mouth, she can’t bring herself to kiss it. Not yet.

Her nose rubs against the reddened skin, just a little, and oh, it's  _warm_. She inhales, taking in the faint scent of basil and neroli. 

Jacob is very far away.

If Frankie knew how to make it all better, really better, she would. But she doesn’t, so the next best thing is to rest her mouth over a single hard knuckle. It isn’t a kiss. Not really. Just her lips and Grace’s burned hand, meeting, and the small sound Grace makes when Frankie’s mouth touches her skin could be a simple exhalation with nothing in it other than air.

“Is that good?” she asks, against Grace’s fingers. Her face feels so hot, like the burn is spreading uncontrollably.

Grace says, very quietly, “Keep going.”

Something’s starting to grow, finally, unfolding out of this different and shaky contact, and for the first time since she’s returned from Santa Fe, there’s a purpose waiting for Frankie. Another kind of workspace. Maybe she can do with Grace’s hand what she always does with good clay, find the best way to praise it, make it spread with new warmth, and at the end of the day, isn’t that what a kiss is supposed to do?

Her lips press against the juncture of Grace's thumb and pointer finger, a soft and deliberate kiss. And then another kiss, and a third, and a fourth. At first, she keeps to the inflamed skin, treating it as best she can, working slowly and carefully around the thin gold rings Grace always wears. There’s no rush, nowhere else for Frankie to be except in this kitchen with this hand, kissing it.

Under her mouth, Grace’s fingers stretch, briefly, and push up a little against Frankie’s blind mouth, extending the invitation.

She’s gentle with Grace, cautious, not wanting to irritate or do anything but repair. Before too long, though, she’s run out of runway, every inch of burn well-kissed twice over, and still Grace isn’t pulling her hand back or moving away. Her fingers keep still, as though she’s waiting for Frankie to make her own decision. Stop or stay.

Well, Frankie won’t stop. She can’t leave first. Not this time.

She finds the tip of Grace’s pointer and middle fingers. Kisses those too, nuzzling them against her mouth. Mindlessly, her tongue darts out, strokes the short blunt curve of Grace’s manicured nails, and before she realizes what she’s done, the line she’s crossed without intending to, Grace gasps and pushes her two fingers between Frankie’s lips.

They both freeze.

It should be ridiculous, what’s just occurred. Objectively, it _is_ ridiculous, the two of them facing each other in the kitchen with Grace’s fingers in her mouth, like she’s getting her fucking oil levels checked, and for a second, Frankie can see them both from a bird’s eye view, as though she’s an external observer or disinterested third party. Grace is wide-eyed, trembling, gorgeous. Frankie, too. Or she’s wide-eyed and trembling, at any rate, and all Mother Gaia’s children are beautiful.

That second is all she gets, though, because it’s impossible to stay outside her body while she's watching Grace breathe too fast, her chest rising and falling rapidly, watching Frankie, and her fingers—oh Jesus—her fingers are _inside—_

A person’s tongue has to move at some point. That’s just physics, or biology, one of those two. So it’s not really a lick, what Frankie does then, even if she's tasting the pads of Grace's fingers, and because what she does isn't licking, the way Grace whimpers can't be something Frankie made her do, can’t be the reason Grace takes another step closer until there's no more room between them. Her breasts brush lightly against Frankie's, and somehow that's the worst thing that's happened so far, the best, too, small friction prickling Frankie with sensation, getting her warmer.

Grace leans in, and for a fevered half-second Frankie's sure she's going to _—_

“You chose Jacob,” Grace says, softly, almost in Frankie’s ear. Her thigh pushes just a little at the juncture of Frankie’s legs, not sliding in between. “You chose him, and then you came back to me.”

Frankie’s face burns even hotter. What the fuck is Grace _doing_? Her mouth’s occupied, so she can’t answer, doesn’t even know what she’d say if she could.

“And here I am, dating Nick. Why not?” Her fingers slide a little further into Frankie’s mouth. “I mean that literally, Frankie. Why wouldn’t I date him? Can you give me a good reason? _Oh—_ ”

All she’d meant to do was swallow. It’s an accident, the way she ends up contracting her mouth around Grace's fingers, sucking a small moan out of Grace, and then there’s another accident when that moan is what gets her hands onto Grace’s hips, yanking her even closer, and a third when Frankie shifts her stance, which opens her legs just a bit. Accidents. Acts of dent. A three-scar pileup.

(She’d taken breaks behind a locked door while painting the second and third works in the Schubert series, ten minutes here and ten minutes there after spending an hour on the light playing across Grace’s breasts, or the gentle slope of her shoulder, or Grace’s head lolled back in unashamed pleasure. Why hadn’t Jacob ever noticed all the energy absorbed into that back room? Even weeks later, it seemed to Frankie like her orgasms were still pulsing inside the terracotta walls.)

An accident, by another name, is collision. Or contact, and Frankie knows that Grace’s right leg can’t take her full weight for too long. Just another reason for it to lift up slightly off the ground, pushing into the fabric of Frankie’s skirt. They’re close enough now that there’s nowhere else to go except the space that’s opened. She closes her eyes.

“Six _months_ ,” Grace whispers, “six months of telling myself—over and over and over—”

Her thigh nudges in against the skirt, higher, until she’s nestled right where Frankie’s been needy since the moment Grace first extended her hand. No underwear today, which means there's just one layer of cotton and one layer of denim separating Grace from the slick that's slipping inexorably between Frankie's legs. 

The site of impact is growing by the second. She's getting fuller, almost painful with touch, hot, and when Grace rubs her thigh into Frankie's mound, just a little, as though it’s an experiment to see what else could possibly happen, Frankie gasps around the fingers packing her mouth. Her hips thrust forward in helpless reflex, trying to get the pressure she wants.

"Frankie—" It's hoarse, desperate. "Oh, God, you feel it too—"

_Her fingers are already wet._

And that’s the thought that jolts Frankie, finally, into deliberate action. Her eyes fly open, and she almost catapults backwards, stumbling away from Grace and her reckless fingers and the press of her hard thigh and the wreck of herself that Frankie could so easily let happen.

No. She could never do that to Jacob. Not even accidentally.

“I can’t, Grace,” she says, and swallows again, needing retreat. The taste is still there. Salt, sharp on her tongue, and goddamn it all to hell, Frankie just left again, didn’t she? “You know I can’t.”

Grace holds her wet hand against her breasts again, like there’s a new injury to cradle. She’s still breathing hard. There’s far more color in her face and neck than before.

“This whole time, I thought I was alone,” she says, after a pause. “But I’m not. Am I, Frankie? _Schubert._ For Christ’s sake.”

And again, Frankie has the odd sense that the floor underneath her feet is a gift that’s getting returned to someone else. This new Grace has the chutzpah to state her question directly. There’s no version of Frankie that could ever bring herself to ask out loud if the woman she’d held in that hot air balloon is the same woman who's right in front of her.

“Frankie?” Fear in Grace’s face, unmistakable and pinched. “The truth. You owe me that.”

There’s so much Frankie doesn’t know. About Nick, especially, and what the hell Grace could ever see in a blowhard like that besides his admittedly great hair, and are they exclusive, and if _good sex_ means she’s told him how to make her come, if she's told him what Frankie's learned, that Grace likes to get fucked deep, steady, slow until she falls apart, and would the truth hurt Nick the way it would hurt Jacob?

Eight hundred miles east, one foot west. Frankie's aching. She says, quietly, “You’re not alone.”

Just like that, the tension leaves Grace, as though Frankie’s cut the hidden strings keeping her shoulders up and back straight. She grabs for the island with the hand she’d had inside Frankie, finding the edge of the counter and holding on. Her knuckles are white, shining.

“Grace—”

“Thank you,” Grace interrupts, and with enough formal dignity to make the Queen of England jealous, adds, “I need to sit down now.”

Grace’s knee. Of course. God, it must be killing her. “Sure, sure,” Frankie says, way too fast and too damn chipper for someone who’s just yanked off the world’s most consequential drop cloth, metaphorically, “yeah, sure, of course we can sit down. Need a hand? Oh, shit, I should probably choose another— All right. Okay. Let me try that again. Grace? Would you like some light assistance as we make our way towards the living room?” She gestures casually towards her right bicep, as if to imply it’s always been ready to provide support for anyone who might need it. Not a big deal.

“I don’t need—” Grace starts to say, and stops. Then, abruptly, “Yes. Take my arm.”

Huh. Today’s just full of surprises.

It takes nearly a minute to get Grace from the kitchen to the living room, a fact that would probably ring louder alarm bells in Frankie if sustained proximity wasn’t so busy tenderizing her traitor heart. It’s pummeling against her ribs, rash and hurting. Grace’s arm locks through hers, holding tightly onto Frankie as they walk, and if Frankie’s sniffing more right now than she needs to, it’s got nothing to do with allergies or a cold. Perfume, again. In Santa Fe, she’d missed Grace’s scent so much she’d even briefly considered buying a sampler vial online and—what? What would she have done with it? Held it to her nose and reached new heights of pathetic by instructing herself not to get turned on?

“The paintings,” Grace says, after they’re seated next to each other on the couch. She turns towards Frankie. There’s a few inches of distance between them, just enough so that Frankie can’t feel the heat from Grace’s body anymore, or smell her. “Am I in them?”

It’d be more accurate to say there isn’t a single brush stroke that doesn’t have something of Grace. Everything's about her. The nightstand supporting a short stack of library books, four orange pill bottles, a pair of unfolded black glasses. Gray silk sheets crumpled around her ankles. Morning sun from the open window warming the headboard wood. “You're in them.”

“May I ask what I’m doing?”

“You may,” Frankie says, slowly, and looks down at her lap. She’ll stay very still while she speaks. No squirming, no matter how much she'd like a little resistance. “But I also may reserve my right to keep that particular bit of information private.”

For two whole days, she’d worked very hard to get the exact shade of purple she needed, matching it to her own Ménage à Moi.

“Oh,” Grace says, and then, “Oh. I see.”

Grace _does_ see. There’s something in her soft voice, the way she twitches, and that flush is stealing back through Frankie, warming her up again. Maybe some of it has to do with Grace finally knowing her secret, but it’s not just the illicit thrill of exposure. It’s being understood, finally, after months and months of ruptured conversations and polite questions and being silent and speaking past each other. It’s Grace, understanding. It’s the prospect of understanding Grace again.

There's a wild and tiny hope swelling in her chest. She says, very carefully, “I thought about you. Not just then, while I was, uh, painting, but all the time. At the Farmer’s Market, when I’d walk past a booth selling Ashwagandha therapeutic elixir oil, and I’d hear your voice say in my head, ‘If I wanted to smell like a horse, it’d be a lot easier to just stop wearing deodorant.’ Or first thing in the morning, when I’d make enough coffee for two people and then drink the whole pot by myself because Jacob never touches the stuff. And sometimes I’d go into this bookstore downtown and look through their new releases table and decide which one you’d want to buy, if you were there with me.”

For a third time, Grace says, “Oh.”

“Did you—?” _Think about me too. Think about me all the time. Figure out what horizon had me in it so you could look that way and wonder._

Without warning, Grace reaches over and takes Frankie’s hand in hers. She squeezes it hard, not letting go.  

“You left me, honey,” she says, simply, and it’s not an accusation. Just fact. “And I had to make a decision. Was I going to sit and wallow for the rest of my life, moping over what I’d lost? Or was I going to find some way to forget and move on, the way you were doing without me?”

“I didn’t forget! I didn’t move on!”

“Frankie,” Grace says. “You love Jacob. Right?”

There’s a silence that gets heavier each second it expands, until it’s sitting on her shoulders, her back, making her body into an even bigger burden. Frankie watches their intertwined hands. They'd touched like this in the hot air balloon with nothing under their feet but some woven wicker, and she'd gripped Grace as hard as she could, finding the only ground she wanted for tethering. 

When her answer comes, it’s honest. “Yes,” she tells Grace and their hands. “I love Jacob. Very much.”

That’s the other half of the equation that forms their reality, both sides balancing out to what they currently have. Grace isn’t alone. Frankie loves Jacob.

Grace exhales, soft and slow. “All right,” she says, and she’s talking to their hands, too. “That’s what I thought. So. Do you think we can be friends like we were, then? Real friends who talk to each other about their lives? Without this—” She gestures between their bodies with her free hand. “This thing getting in the way?”

“Thing,” Frankie repeats, and she doesn’t have to look directly at Grace to know they’re both blushing. “This thing.”

“Attraction. Sexual whatever. Energy, if you want to be a hippie about it. I’m sure you do.”

“I can be real friends,” she says, and means it. The alternative is far too awful to contemplate. A life where she’s left Jacob—no, not left Jacob, left Santa Fe—for a Grace who isn’t really there, who saves her jokes for Sheree and her nights for Nick and gives Frankie nothing you could get your teeth around. If they’re friends again, real friends who know they know each other, then maybe that’ll be enough. She’ll have Jacob, and she’ll have Grace back, and her work, and her family, and she won’t lie awake at night bone-sick and sore from what it's too late to say. “Whatever it takes, Grace. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“So I can talk to you about Nick, sometimes,” Grace says. Her thumb slides a little against Frankie’s palm. _Oh_. “And what we do. You’ll be okay with that.”

Friends can hold hands. That’s one of the things friends do with each other. “Just spare me the gory details, please.”

“Okay. That’s more than reasonable. And you can keep telling me about you and Jacob, you know. If you want.”

Frankie’s got a thumb that can move, too, so it does, the nail gently scratching the inside of Grace's wrist. In response, Grace sucks in air, a quick intake of breath, and there it is again, thrumming between them. The _thing_.

“Maybe,” Frankie says. “Sometimes. If I want. I might want.”

She’s still thinking about it several hours later, as she’s sitting cross-legged on the floor of her cluttered studio, surrounded by boxes and the smell of acetone and vanilla, Sheree’s ghosts. About what it means to maybe want, and the kinetic future she isn't able to predict because the stars are always moving, even if Frankie can’t tell. About stumbling, and how a bad knee isn't the only kind of injury that makes it harder to go forward. Doing it anyhow. The succulents she’ll plant, the boyfriend she loves, the best friend she chose.

Real friends. The kind that reciprocate in all sorts of ways.

When she pulls out a bundled collection of vagrant paint brushes from the open mouth of a box labeled CEREAL, it doesn’t take long for her eyes to find the one still stained with Ménage purple. Of course, she’d cleaned it, but the color hadn’t left the hairs no matter how much she’d rinsed and rubbed. Her other brushes are tinted, too, but not in the same way, not bright, and they don’t have the same capacity to take her back into a terracotta room where she’d stroked her truth out of a canvas, out of herself.

Frankie stares at the brush until purple’s just another color. Then she shakes her head, as though that'll dislodge the memory, and pushes herself up off the floor, bundle still in hand. Right now there’s no drawer for it, but she’ll find the right home.

**Author's Note:**

> If there's a source of inspiration for this fic, other than my desire to make some sense of Grace Hanson at the beginning of the fourth season, it's [Brenda Shaughnessey's poem "Visitor."](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/54917/visitor-56d235d8851d8)
> 
> I love and treasure feedback. Any you feel like leaving would be deeply appreciated!


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